Free Will – Working on Living—through philosophy

Life and Death, Sunshine and Rain: Accept one, Accept the Other

March 14, 2017 Wrisley Comments 0 Comment

This morning I came across the lovely Buddha Doodles illustration with the Khalil Gibran quote: “If I accept the sunshine and warmth, then I must also accept the thunder and lightning.” It’s a wonderful line to think about. For what exactly does it mean? In what sense must accepting the one mean accepting the other? I am aware of at least one other explicit version of the idea, namely, in the Daoist text the Zhuangzi, though I imagine it is…

A Difficult Dilemma: Deny that Humanity is Fallen or Deny Evolution?

May 16, 2011 Wrisley Comments 7 comments

I find Christianity (and Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.) perplexing. I suppose Kierkegaard would want me to embrace this feeling (as regards Christianity). I admit my perplexity because I do not want to come across as angry or hostile in these essays. I really want to understand religion and humankind’s possible relationship with the divine better. One of the things that troubles me with Christianity is the claim that it is only through Christ that one can achieve salvation, which I…

A Problem for Libertarian Free Will

December 1, 2009 Wrisley Comments 0 Comment

In this post I will argue that libertarianism cannot actually explain or make rational why an agent chooses one course of action over another. I will do this by arguing that though libertarianism seems to be able to explain why an agent acts the way she does at some given moment in time, even though the action is not causally determined, libertarianism cannot explain why the agent does that action instead of some other action. I find this troubling, since…

Working on Living—through philosophy

and poetry and music and love and family and friends and…

Browsed by
Category: Free Will